NEW WAVE DAZE....(part 2)

Yesterday when I was young
The taste of life was sweet as rain upon my tongue
I teased at life as if it were a foolish game
The way the evening breeze may tease the candle flame

The thousand dreams I dreamed
The splendid things I planned
I always built alas on weak and shifting sand
I lived by night and shunned the naked light of day
And only now I see how the years ran away
 
Returning home again for a few months I was to find a new group of friends.  Still working at the menswear store I became a beacon for peers who, like me were into the new wave image.  There weren't many of us, but between other sales people in the mall and old school friends we formed a collective group. I wasn't the only 'gay in the village' after all.  But with my outrageous dyed hair and effeminate ways I was the most obvious.

We partied at each others houses on the weeknights and on Saturdays went to Stranded.  We were a mixed group of both gay and straight, boys and girls. Their friendship and our shared tastes made the next few months living at home bearable.

I changed jobs and was now working for a company making diet meals for rich, society women in the Eastern Suburbs.  The job was less well paid and hard work.  I was a kitchen hand , cleaner and took orders over the phone.  Our clients were too embarrassed to pick up from the shop so everything was packed and delivered daily.  There was no dress restriction so I was free to wear what I wanted and finally style my hair into the latest design. 
 
I vividly remember one day when I was shopping at the local fruit and vegetable market for work supplies.  It was an enormous barn like building with 10 checkouts and a public address system used by the workers.  I walked in wearing something I had made for a party the previous evening, out of green and white hessian.  White hessian harem pants and a green hessian blouse which had a long shawl which draped over one side of my face and down to the ground.  Over the P.A system one of the store-room boys announced 'Bloody hell, it's the Queen of Sheba'!

I met my next boyfriend at Stranded in early August and a few weeks later he asked me to move in with him.  Again he was older than me, but lived in the suburb where my job was which was a good enough reason to say yes.  He was a hairdresser and for the first two months we lived above the salon where he worked.  It wasn't a flash place but had a wonderful balcony with panoramic views across Sydney Harbour and was only a 5 minute walk to my work.

He wasn't my ideal boyfriend, but again he was generous and easy to live with.  The bonus was that I was now getting free haircuts and colouring!  Every week when the salon ran their training night I was the guinea pig for the latest cut or colour and started modelling for them at various award nights and hairdressing competitions.

We had to move after about 2 months.  Both of us contracted a really bad case of body lice which of course were infesting the building which was nearly 100 years old and had been a hair salon for at least 20 years.

The apartment we found was amazing.  Situated in the small and exclusive suburb of Rushcutter's Bay which is right on the harbour and the suburb neighbouring Kings Cross.  The apartment was huge with a 5 sided lounge room, small kitchen, bathroom and an equally large bedroom with a small balcony.  We were directly opposite the park and had great views of the bay and neighbouring exclusive suburb of Darling Point.

My boyfriend was really into Art Deco.  At the time you could buy the most amazing second hand furniture at really cheap prices in many of the inner city suburbs.  We had the apartment totally decked out like a scene from a 1930's movie.  Everything was 10 - 15 minutes walk away, clubs, bars, restaurants, but the location was an oasis of serenity, with the park across the street and the adjoining house, one of the few houses in the suburb, boasting an enormous tree filled garden.

We played our roles well.  He was the bread winner and I was the home-maker.  As a qualified hairdresser he was payed a lot better than I was and his clients were all wealthy and often gave him generous tips.  So he paid the rent and bought the furniture, while I bought the shopping and cleaned the apartment.  While he worked on Saturdays I would start my day getting high on marijuana and spend the next 3 hours happily cleaning away.  Our friends always commented on how clean our apartment was!

We lasted together for 14 months.  He didn't smoke dope but was a drinker.  In the evenings when I would smoke a joint or two he would down a bottle of wine...this wasn't a problem until we went out.  Then he would get really drunk and obnoxious with people, often getting close to a punch up - which he physically wouldn't have been at an advantage in.

After clubbing, it was always a taxi ride home as the risk of him abusing a total stranger waling home was too great and as we had to walk through Kings Cross the risk of him getting into a fight with another drunk yob was inevitable.

One night his salon held a hair show in a very straight pub.  I and some of my friends were modelling on the night and the place was packed with very drunk, very homophobic young guys and their girlfriends. I had made all the costumes for the event and they were as daring and outrageous as I could get.  It was a fantastic night and not only did the show go down really well, but the music we had chosen for our modelling was a big hit with the clientele.

After the show the DJ played our different songs over and over at the request of the patrons.  We had a great night mixing and dancing with people whom we would never have mingled with normally.  Everyone was having fun until my boyfriend had one drink too many.  He started abusing anyone and everyone around him.  My friends and I tried to control him but he was too far gone to take the warning.

My biggest worry was that, while nothing would happen inside the bar, there were at least a dozen young guys ready to take him outside and belt the daylights out of him, and probably us as well.  I remember threatening him to stop, after managing to stop two guys from dragging him outside, and then when he went in for a second go at them I just punched him in the face.

Bang!  I who had maybe hit someone once or twice in my life had knocked my boyfriend unconscious!  Funnily enough, while his work mates took him home in a taxi, the boys he had been abusing asked me to stay and bought me drinks for the rest of the evening.

The next morning my boyfriend told me he was moving out and that I could have the apartment. It was all very simple and civil.  Two days later he found a new apartment and moved out taking all the furniture with him.  I wasn't earning enough to cover the rent so that night after work I went up to Fitzroy Gardens and prostituted myself.  This was how I managed to cover my rent and bills and slowly start buying furniture over  the few months  Then boyfriend number 3 would come along.  Looking back, he was probably the only boy I truly loved and was loved by in return........

NEW WAVE DAZE.....

In a west end town in a dead end world
where east end boys meet west end girls..

So I was back where I started.  At home, living with my parents, far, far away from the lights and glamour of the city.  It really was a dead end world.

My parents accepted me back happily and after a few days life returned to it's normal, tedious outer suburban routine.  I celebrated my 18th birthday at home alone with not a drink or drug in sight.  My older sister was planning her upcoming engagement and all the focus was on her.

My mother managed to get me a job working in the same shopping mall where she was now working in our neighbouring town.  Unfortunately she was working in a trendy boutique and I got a job in a very conservative menswear store. It was totally the opposite of what I wanted but it was a job.

I had to dress in conservative clothes, gel my outrageous hair down flat each day and sell clothes that I wouldn't be seen dead wearing myself.  It was so old fashioned that when mothers would come in with their teenage sons and ask me  'did we sell anything trendy?' I would quietly direct them to the department store next door!

But I was good at my job and my work mates were accepting and friendly.  I worked all week, including Thursday nights and Saturday mornings.  I was stuck in a backward, bigoted world where my only safety was inside the shop.  Outside I was commonly abused by the local hoods, that was just about every boy except me!  One morning while I was having my daily coffee someone shoved their finger sharply in my back.  I turned around and a middle aged woman spat out loudly at me, 'your fucking sort ought to be locked up!'

One Thursday night I was even physically attacked inside the shop by a group of local boys, all drunk and determined to bash the shit out of the 'poofter'.  My manager and the mall security had to intervene.  Afterwards my boss told me it might be a good idea to change my dyed bright orange hair to a more conservative colour.

After 2 months of trying to stay away from my former life of drugs and the gay scene I realized I was kidding myself.  Funnily enough it was while watching TV one Friday night with my mother.  The movie was the Dianna Ross version of 'Lady Sings the Blues' - the life story of Billy Holliday.  The club scenes and drug taking took me back to where I wanted to be.

That week I bumped into an old school mate who was selling drugs and bought a block of hashish.  That was to be the start of my very long addiction to drugs that would last for the next 30 odd years.

The early 1980's were a defining time for both music and fashion.  Not since the 1960's and not again until the recent emergence of K Pop has music and fashion been so revolutionary.  I was right in the thick of it.  I was listening to bands like the Sex Pistols, The Clash, Siouxsie Sue and the Banshees, OMD, Toyah Wilcox, New Order, The Cure......anything that was New Wave, Punk and British.

Saturday afternoons after work I would head into the city to hit Paddington Markets.  This was Sydney's first alternative market for arts and fashion and the place to be seen.  Every week I would buy either a new outfit or new shoes. Each one as individual and outrageous as possible.

Back home again to get ready for Saturday night out.  I would spend up to two hours putting my outfit together and getting my hair gelled, spiked and hair-sprayed to the max.  Then it was a walk to the station with a big daggy coat covering my clothes and a large newspaper which I would hold open to cover people seeing my hair and make up.  The 9.30pm train to the city was full of drunken yobs going home or off to another suburban party and the risk of getting bashed was high.

My venue of choice was Sydney's trendiest night club, Stranded.  This was the in place to be and was located in the basement of one of Sydney's most historic, beautiful and expensive shopping arcades. It was a mixture of people and styles, most of us on the edge of the latest fashion trends.  The others were rich society boys and girls who came because it was the 'in place'.  But even their money didn't give them the advantage.

A select group of us were given automatic and free entry.  Often walking straight past a line up of 50 or more people waiting to get in.  Our first drinks were free and with both our fashion styles and dance styles we were the centre of attention.  It wasn't a gay bar, but it was the hottest spot in town and the clientele was mixed.  Some nights I picked up and went home with a boy.  Other nights I didn't.  Then it was either a 3am 1 hour train ride home, or crashing with friends in their grotty inner city flats.  Most weekends I crashed with friends and spent Sundays recovering and then eating out in the cool restaurants of the time.  By Monday I had enough money left to get me through to pay day for lunch and train fare but very little else.

The week nights I spent in my room, headphones on, listening to cassettes of my favourite music and smoking hash.  I taught my self to sew on a sewing machine and began raiding the second hand stores buying 50's and 60's clothes or materials which I would turn into bizarre outfits.

I managed to last just 6 months living back at home.  Around Christmas time I met a boy at Stranded who I went home with.  He had a small bachelor flat in Kings Cross and we would spend the nights dancing, before heading to his flat for sex and then a whole day on Sunday getting stoned on grass or snorting speed with friends.  It was a totally alternative lifestyle in which I reveled.

He was 24, which at the time, seemed ancient to me.  However he was convenient and not demanding and would give me anything I asked for.  A few weeks into our 'relationship' he asked me to move in with him.  I told him that his flat was too small for two of us so he found a house in nearby Surrey Hills.  This was the 'haunted' house I mentioned earlier in my story.  I moved in and conveniently broke up with him a week later.  He had no problems with me staying on.  The house had 3 floors and 4 bedrooms.  We were friends and it was convenient for both of us.

So besides my boring job in the suburbs, I was now able to live the life I wanted and would continue this way for the next 3 and a half  years.  The jobs, boyfriends, clothes, hairstyles and apartments changed, but the lifestyle didn't.

These  years would possibly be the best time of my life.

CRAZY DAZE.....

Four of us drove the 1700km from Sydney to Adelaide.  I was excited about life in a new city but shocked to find that I had come to a large town instead!

The two boys who had promised us accommodation dumped us on arrival as there parents flatly refused to have two unknown boys in the house.  Our only compensation was being allowed to sleep in the car outside on the first night.

The following morning I got my shit together and took myself and the other boy, Stephen, into the 'city' and paid for two rooms at the YMCA.  We explored the town, which took all of about 1 hour, but managed to find the two gay bars so at least had a plan for Saturday evening.

The Adelaide gay scene was in it's infancy.  The bars were small and very incestual.  Never a wallflower I dressed in my most outrageous clothes, spiked my hair and did my make up (it was 1981 and boys did make up then).  I was an instant hit.  Everyone wanted to know me and before the end of one week I had slept with a dozen boys, become friends with the show girls and owner of the bar and was offered a job performing one night a week.

Even better was that the 'Mars Bar' DJ was also from Sydney and at the end of the first week we got talking and he invited me to stay with him and his boyfriend, rent free, for as long as I liked.  Where-ever you are Glenn Molloy, thank you from the bottom of my heart.  You took me in and asked for nothing in return.

Glenn lived about 5km from the city centre in a 3 apartment complex.  His two neighbours were both wonderful girls who were into the gay scene.  We lived in each others apartments, ate, drank, laughed and life was amazing.  We partied 4 nights a week and the other 3 nights and 7 days lived in a haze of marijuana, magic mushrooms, LSD and what ever pills we could get our hands on.

Coming from Sydney I had seen some of the best drag shows and new the numbers off by heart.  I went shopping in second hand stores and bought amazing outfits from the 50's and 60's, an auburn wig, which my hairdressing friend styled into a long bob and the girls did my make up.  I looked like a young Barbara Streisand gone punk.

Of course it wasn't long before the bar owners offered me the occasional job with paying clients but these only happened once or twice a week.  Adelaide was not the sin city that Sydney had been.  Still with these few jobs, a paid spot once a week performing and getting dole money I managed to not only survive but have the best time doing so.

The nights were wild.  Clubbing until 3am, a different boy to take home nearly every night and not a care in the world.  I made wonderful friends, some of whom I would only know for the short while I lived in Adelaide, others would turn up later in my life back in Sydney.

The fun nights out and crazy days were too many to recount but I remember almost every day I lived there with fondness and nostalgia.

One of my favourite memories is spending the day in the 'city' with another drag queen, Adele.  We both dressed up to the nines, looking like Paris catwalk models and caught the bus into town.  Adelaide really was a 'hick town' back then and the locals had seen nothing like it.  We paraded through the shopping centres, sashayed down Rundle Mall all the while totally freaking out the residents.  Mouths were gaping, jaws dropping and those with cameras were clicking madly.  We even got to do a photo shoot with a professional photographer outside the steps of Parliament House.

It all ended quickly and unexpectedly.  I was already beginning to feel the 'tyranny of distance' living in a city hundreds of kilometres from anywhere.  Living a hand to mouth existence and missing the pace of life in Sydney.  Then one night I had a bad dream about my father and instinctively rang home the next morning.  Dad was in hospital with severe burns and my mother pleaded with me to come home.

Two days later I was on a train, which I nearly missed as my friends and I had partied all day and were late arriving at the station.  I had to jump aboard the moving train, totally stoned and just starting to go into an LSD trip.  Believe me, 15 hours tripping on a country train is not a thing I ever want to experience again!

I had spent 3 months partying wildly and would return home as the prodigal son and spend the next 3 months trying to redeem myself and being utterly bored with my existence before realizing that I was not cut out for the suburban life.  Another chapter was about to begin.

BROTHEL DAZE.....

Little Joe never once gave it away.
Everybody had to pay and pay.
A hustle here and a hustle there,
New York City is the place where 
They say 'hey babe, take a walk on the wild side'...

It wasn't NYC, it was Sydney and the brothel was located in the inner city suburb of Surry Hills.
This was not the Surry Hills of today, with it's designer warehouse apartments, modernized terraced houses and swanky re-furbished office buildings.  No, this was the suburb caught between urban decay and demographic change that was slowly starting to take place.

A suburb on the very fringe of the city which was a mixture of warehouses, small factories and businesses, Tooth's Brewery and Rupert Murdoch's newspaper empire. Of old terrace houses, steep streets, narrow lanes, remnants of Sydney's original China Town still lingering in the form of household mahjong gambling dens, and noodle making shops. While some grand old colonial houses still remained, most were tiny, vermin infested terraces, many abandoned with drug addicts squatting inside them, or housing elderly long standing welfare residents. 

Everything about the suburb in the early 1980's suggested decay and abandonment.  Belvoir Boys, the brothel where I would work for two months was no different.  Located in a tiny, two up, two down Victorian workers terrace, with the usual kitchen and bathroom extension at the back, it was a seedy brothel, but also a haven from what I had just experienced.

Being raped did not have a hugely damaging effect on me.  Even though I can still recall the night and some of what happened, I was so out of it during the whole experience that I was able to feel neither pain nor fear.  Being dumped, penniless and battered in the early morning was what I remember most.  This is when the shame set in and also the resolve to never allow myself to get in that situation again, or so I believed at the time.

The brothel (a few years later I would actually work in a 'parlour') became my home and saviour for the next few months.  I won't go into detail about the clients as later I will devote a whole chapter to this area, but I do remember my first.  A middle aged man on business from the North of England.  He paid $20 for a head job and near the end asked, 'eee lad, is it alright if I cum in your mouth?'.

My favourite, who also became an almost daily regular, was a young wealthy guy from one of Sydney's elite families who always paid me double and also bought me gifts. Clothes, a gold watch, my first bottle of aftershave - 'Grey Flannel' - and often took me out to lunch or dinner.  The one I remember the most though was an extremely elderly gentleman.  He was dressed in an old baggy suit and used a walking stick.  For this reason we had to go in the front downstairs room, which was normally where us boys would sit during the day.

He took off his jacket and shirt, then his trousers, and then his wooden leg!  We did nothing but sit together with his arm around me while he talked.  He told me that he was married and had grandchildren and had been secretly gay all his life but had never had sex with another man.  We both cried when he told me he first realised when he was buried alive in the trenches with another young soldier in WWI for two days.  They had clung together, fearing death and while waiting rescue they had fondled each other and kissed.  After being dug out they never spoke of the incident again.

The boys I worked with were a real mixed bag.  A few like me from suburban working and middle class families, escaping the tedium of their school and home lives.  Some purely professional  who worked the job like it was a regular 9 - 5 office job, and some really sad boys whose childhoods had been filled with both physical and sexual abuse, often by their fathers or other close relatives.

During the days it was generally quiet, except on weekends, so we would mostly watch TV, go into the city shopping, or often spend the morning at Prince Alfred Park at the public swimming pool.  In the afternoons and evenings it was all go.  We were busy from early afternoon until around midnight.

I and another boy, Jeff, were the two most popular boys there.  He was 19, tall, blonde haired and blue eyed.  I was 17 (and looked 15) and between us we saw probably 80% of the clients.  One Friday night I serviced 9 clients in a row, only stopping to shower before going straight back upstairs with the next client.

I was earning anything from $40 on a quiet day to over $200 on a busy day.  That was an absolute fortune both for me and most people back then.  6 months later, I would be back living with my parents again and working in a menswear store from 9am - 5.30pm (9pm on Thursday nights and 8-12pm on Saturdays) and earning $135 per week!

A few blocks away, and frequent visitors, were another group of sex workers of a totally different kind.  They worked for HOD (the House of Dominance) which was a famous and much frequented B&D parlour in Sydney at the time.  These guys were earning double what we were, generally with little or no sex involved, but the work was certainly something you had to 'be into'.  Sadly most of them had really horrific stories of sexual and physical abuse, many at the hands of institutions where they had been raised, or placed.  

25 odd years later, the much respected private college I worked for bought this very same building to use as one of their teaching campuses - they were both shocked and amazed when I told them of it's former use!

We also had drag queens working at the brothel.  The first I had really met on a personal level. I was intrigued and surprised.  The only transsexuals I had seen were either on TV or performing at the clubs and these were the totally over the top, in your face type.  The queens working at the brothel were nothing like this, in fact, except that they wore women's clothes and make up they were pretty much the same as the rest of us.

On Friday afternoons all the factories in the area would close at 2pm.  There would be an influx of  'straight' guys all wanting to see a tranny.  Whether or not it's specifically true in all cases, but I was told that most of these 'factory' workers came because it was cheaper to get a head job from a tranny than a real girl.  It was also pre AIDS days so the fear which later caused a sharp decline in the sex work industry for a year or two wasn't an issue.  

It was so busy that often the boss would get me to dress up shortly before 2pm.  One or other of the girls would do my make up and I would work as a tranny for the next 4 hours.  It was really easy work, and most of the guys didn't care that I didn't have tits (either implants or hormonal), they just wanted a head job from a 'girl'.

So for two months I lived on the wild side.  Loving every minute of it.  The clients were all easy and it felt much safer being in a brothel than working the streets.  The boys became my friends and confidantes.  We shared our lives, sometimes our money and looked after each other.

Then one afternoon I was on an out call and I received the phone call about Billy.  A few hours later I was being interviewed at Darlinghurst Police Station and being told my life was in danger from one of Sydney's most notorious underworld figures.  The ironic part of it was, that one of the interviewing officers, would later become infamous for being one of the most corrupt and dangerous criminals in Sydney!  2 days later I was in a car with two of the boys headed for Adelaide......and a whole new life.

RUNAWAY BOY....

You leave in the morning with everything you own in a little black case.
You stand on the platform, the wind and rain on your sad and lonely face....

That pretty much sums up the day I decided to run away from home and life.

Mum had come with me to see me off on the country train bound for my new life in teacher's college.
I had no regrets for what I was about to do, only a guilty feeling for the hurt I knew I would cause.

Chance encounters can change a person's life.  This is what happened to me during the short time between college orientation day and starting college.

During my days at the Cross, I had met a group of boys who lived in a shared flat on William St.  They were all young, gay and , unlike me, living the life they wanted.  It was they who introduced me to the 'gay scene'.  The gay clubs of Oxford St, which until then I had no idea even existed.

I was hooked from my first night there.  Hundreds of people just like me.  The music, the drinking, the drag shows.  It was in 'Patches' night club where I met Billy.

By the end of the night we had become the best of friends and I had told him of my dread of having to go to teachers college in a country town.  We went back to his house and stayed the night and in the morning made plans for me to move in with him (and his parents) instead of going to college.

I left the train with my bag at the first stop and made my way back to Billy's house.  For 4 days we did nothing but stay in his room, only going out to the kitchen or bathroom.  Billy, I discovered wanted to be a drag queen.  He encouraged me to to the same and we spent lots of time experimenting with make up and clothes before going out in drag for our first time.

He didn't want me to work the streets and knowing that was the first place my parents would look for me, I agreed it was a good idea.  At night we went to the bars.  Patches, Cappricios, on to the Taxi Club and ending up back in the Cross at 'Les Girls'.  Watching the amazing shows and spending a lot of time re-doing our make up.  What a sight we must of looked!

This lasted for about 6 days.  By this time my scant savings were running out and Billy's father came home drunk one morning and caught us in bed together.  Until this time neither his mother or father had seemed to care - I had even been introduced to them as Billy's new boyfriend.  However catching us in the middle of sex was enough for his father to tell me to pack my bags and go.

It was the last time I would see Billy alive.  

With no where else to go I headed back to the Cross.  No plans, nowhere to live, no real idea of what I was going to do.  I remember sitting in the 'Bottoms Up' bar at the Rex Hotel (one of the seediest hotels in all of Sydney) for most of the day.  Towards the early evening I met a boy (I don't remember his name) and after a few drinks he invited me back to his house.

We had sex and then he said it would be okay for me to stay with him and his flatmate if I wanted.  His flatmate turned out to be a 60 something year old man, who was quite happy for me to stay, provided I let him watch (and sometimes join in) me and the other boy having sex.  Who was I to argue?

The two of them were really nice to me.  I had a roof over my head, dinner cooked every night and during the day I could still work the fountain to make extra money.  

It was on one of these working days that I met a young guy called Terry who sat and chatted with me and asked if I had ever thought of working in a brothel.  He convinced me it would be really profitable for me and much safer than working the streets.  Not only would I be protected from any unsavory or dangerous clients, but being under age, he could guarantee me protection from getting busted.  Believe it or not, the 'Fountain' where most of the under age boys worked during the day and early evening was directly in front of the Kings Cross Police Station.

I didn't say yes straight away but kept the details in my head.  It would only be another day before I would desperately need them.

That afternoon I got into a drinking session at the Bottom's Up Bar with a group of seemingly friendly gay guys.  I had made $60 during the day and was waiting for my friends to finish work so I could get into the flat (I didn't have a key).  

One of my drinking 'buddies' invited me to go with him to the toilets and smoke a joint.  I was so trusting and naive.  Within 20 minutes not only was I feeling stoned, but I started spinning out.  On a bar stool, my head exploding and my arms and legs so wracked with pins and needles that I was trying to pull them off, and screaming with the sensations I was feeling.

I vaguely remember the barman saying something to my friends and them clearly replying 'It's okay, he's my brother, I'll take him home'.....

At 3am in the morning, after being raped repeatedly by at least 5 or 6 different men, I was thrown out on the street somewhere in the back streets of Paddington.  Bleeding, still suffering the effects of Angel Dust (which I was told later was probably what the joint had been laced with) I staggered as best I could back to my friends apartment.  I had to wait until 6am before they woke up so just sat holding myself in a tight ball on the stairs.  My money had been taken and my clothes were torn and I was bleeding still from my anus. 

Up in the flat, after a hot shower and a warm and soothing cup of tea, the older guy told me I was too much trouble and had to find somewhere else to stay.  He gave me until the afternoon to get out and it was during this time that I decided to go to the brothel and see if I could get not only a job but somewhere to sleep.....

CAREER CHOICES.

I made my first career choice at the end of Year 10.  I wanted to do a hairdressing apprenticeship.  Not only because I had been given an offer by a 'friend' who I had met during my beach hitch-hiking, but also because I was now realizing that this was an area where I would be accepted, in fact almost expected, in being gay.

I was desperate to leave school.  The thought of continuing to be abused and humiliated for another two years was too much to contemplate. On top of that, I would now be in a mixed sex school and the idea of being victimized in front of girls was frightening. 

In retrospect it would have been both an ideal and sensible option for me.  I would be mixing with people who accepted my sexuality, learning a trade and earning money, and away from the 'yobbos' who made my daily life hell. 4 years later I would become a  hair model for some of Sydney's top hairdressing salons.

My parents were totally against the idea of me leaving school and wanted me to complete my Higher School Certificate. In their defense, they wanted what they considered best for me. I begged, I pleaded and eventually told them how miserable I was at school and that I was gay.  Mum immediately said 'do you think we didn't know?'  Dad went mental and threatened to drag me to Kings Cross (Sydney's Red Light district) to show me the 'depraved' lifestyle that he believed awaited me.  He wasn't to know but that was to become a proven prophesy.

So I continued my final years at school, not all bad, and not all friendless.  I had no heart for it though and managed to attend only the classes I enjoyed, Art, English and History and miss the rest for most of the two years.  The Brothers didn't care if you attended or not.  In the morning you were marked on the role in your home room and again at the end of the day.  They were stupid enough to put me in a home room with an adjoining fire escape!  So once the role was marked my one true friend, Patricia and I would sneak down the fire escape, and once classes started, run through the fields and get a bus to her house, spending the day listening to music, smoking joints, munching out on her wealthy parents well-stocked kitchen before heading back to school.

As a result my final grades were abysmal and I had very few career options available.  One of which was going to teachers college.  This I chose as a last resort, but could only gain entry into a college situated about 150km away from Sydney.  I would have to live in.

But I need to back track to explain how I ended up working as a prostitute instead of going to teacher's college.

At some stage in Year 11, while at the local library, doing school work I chanced upon a book simply entitled 'Prostitutes'.  It was a series of short stories on the contemporary lives of London sex workers.  I was fascinated.  Not only by the lifestyle, but also by the fact that this was something I not only had done, but without payment, but that I could do it in England where I desperately wanted to be.

During the holidays I hopped a train and went into Kings Cross one morning.  It was just a few weeks after they had opened the new Eastern Suburbs railway line with a station at Kings Cross.  I had never been there before and exiting the station I had no idea which way to turn or where to go to solicit.

I picked the right direction and found myself at the El Alamein Fountain, an iconic landmark set in a park on Darlinghurst Rd.  It didn't take me long to realize that I was in the right place.  It was a beautiful Sydney spring day and the park was the ideal place to sit and take in all the sights and sounds of this bohemian suburb.  I was fascinated by everything and everyone.

Before long, probably less than 15 minutes, I guy in a red sports car pulled up and started chatting to me.  He asked if I was 'working' and when I replied yes he said 'hop in'.  He drove me down to the Boy Charlton swimming pool, which I would realize later was a notorious gay pick up spot and we had sex in the change rooms.  I didn't like the fact that half a dozen men were looking either under or over the door, but I did like it that within 40 minutes I had earned $20 (which was roughly a days pay back then) and the event was no different to my other encounters with previous older men.

He drove me back to the Fountain, and after walking around the Cross for a while and having lunch at McDonald's I returned and met another guy.  Only in his 20's, from Switzerland and very good looking.  He was staying at the Gazebo Hotel and we went to his room.  The sex was fun and he paid me $30.  So in less than half a day I had earned more money than I had ever seen and it hadn't been difficult.

I would continue to do this most Saturdays  for the next year.  Generally only seeing one or two 'mugs' as they were called before returning home with money in my pocket.  On Sunday's I spent the day at the beach as usual.

At the end of High School, I continued doing this on an almost daily basis, lying to my mother and telling her that I was going job-hunting.  I got away with this for about 4 weeks.  Stupidly I had not only been saving money in my room, but had kept a record of my 'earnings' in my diary. Not only that but I had also given my home phone number to one young 'mug' and he had rung one day when mum was home.  She became suspicious and went through my room.  She found the diary but not the money.

Strangely as upset as she was with this she did not tell my father.  However she confined me to the house, ringing from work every hour for the next few days.  Then she told me she had got me a job near where she worked.  I was trapped. The job was in a poultry shop and was not only hard work but disgustingly smelly.  Thankfully they were only hiring me for the busy pre-Christmas period so within a short period I was again jobless.

Now I was more careful.  I went to the local job agency daily and applied for many jobs with no success.  But I did have the application forms and interview times as proof so Mum had to believe that I was going to these interviews, which I generally did, but managed to supplement my income 2 or 3 times a week 'working the fountain'.

I will return to this period again as it was a short but eventful time for me and far to detailed to cover in one blog.

In mid January the college I had been accepted into held it's orientation day.  My parent's proudly drove me the 150km to the college and stuck with me every step of the way.  I wasn't unhappy to give it a try, and knew that although my mother hadn't realized that I would need an income, which she could not provide, to study there, that I had the option of coming back to Sydney each weekend and working to earn my living expenses.

What stopped me was after the orientation when we headed into the nearby town.  From the moment we got out of the car and started wandering the historic streets of this famous gold mining city, I was the target of all the local yobbos, who immediately identified me as a poofter and were enjoying themselves calling me it as loudly and aggressively as possible.  My father didn't say a word.  My mother said 'just ignore them- your better than them'.

I was about to embark on another 3 year nightmare journey of ridicule and abuse - being a small country city I also realized that physical abuse was even more of a likelihood.  I had a month before I started.  My parents were not giving me an option.  Now I had to make the heartbreaking choice of doing as my sister did, devastating my parent's lives again, or putting myself through 3 years of continued mental and physical abuse......

COOL CONTRASTS.

The last 3 years of my school life were filled with many contrasts.  While I hated almost every minute of my new school, I cherished my new found freedom every afternoon and weekend.

Once I got off the train I had the freedom to stop at Warwick's for a couple of hours or spend my afternoon with Mark (Mrs C's son) in the bush with the dogs.  Neither of my parent got home until well after dark so I had at least 2 hours of freedom every day.

 At Warwick's I could meet up with my old friends, and some new ones - by this stage Warwick had recruited a whole retinue of younger boys.  Amazingly this was due to his friendship with his near neighbours who had two sons.  Warwick and the boys father both coached the local cricket team, so in their eyes he was just a friendly mentor type.  Years later many of these boys would come forward and report to the police of Warwick's molesting them.  I also was called to the police station to give a report as my name had been given by one of the boys.  Of course, due to my own criminal record and past life as a sex worker I was not asked to give evidence.

Warwick was duly sentenced some 30 years after the events.  I know we all have different viewpoints and I do assume that some of the boys were both sexually aroused and sexually confused at the time, but although legally committing a crime against minors, Warwick was, in my experience, neither forceful nor particularly demanding in his sexual appetite.  I'm sure at the time most of the boys enjoyed themselves as much as I did.

My older sister, who was working in the local bank, was seeing one of the boys from our neighbouring suburb.  Initially she started seeing the younger brother, then as teenage girls do, she fell in love with the older brother.  She was with him for 3 years and he, his brother and their friend Max, became a regular part of our household.

The two brothers were nice guys, but typical rough, tough going nowhere boys.  Max was the only one of the 3 who was still at high school, finishing his HSC (university entrance exams).  They were all into cars and motorbikes and not much else.

On the weekends I would often tag along with them.  A few kilometres from our house was an old disused section of highway.  It was in the middle of the bush and had long since been replace by the new highway.  It stretched for about 4 kilometres and was only accessible through a 'locked' gate (which the boys soon unlocked) and was the perfect place for them to ride their motorbikes.

With them and my sisters girlfriends we would spend hours riding the bikes.  They only had one motorbike and took turns both riding and doubling us along the track.  The first time I was on the back of the bike with Max, he told me to put my arms around his waist and hang on tight.  Off we went as fast as I had ever been before. Away from the sight of the others Max took one hand off the handle bars and put my hand down onto his hard penis.....


Max was one of the best looking guys I had known.  We were time poor and both knew that we couldn't do anything that day.  But Max would often visit before my sister returned from work and let me give him a blow job.  I remember years later having to feign surprise when my sister announced that everyone was saying that Max had 'turned gay' and was hanging around the gay scene in Sydney's Oxford St- though I never recall seeing him.

My real escape and passion though was still at the beach.  My mother's best friend and her mother both had houses on one of Sydney's northern beaches.  I would spend the best part of weekends for 3 years there and loving it.

 Not only did I love surfing but it was the one place where everyone was cool and non-judgemental.  I didn't have a surfboard, but either body surfed or used a 'surf-mat', which is a blow up rubber 1970's version of a boogie board.  I could ride with the best of them. 2, 3 and even 4 metre waves were no deterrent to me and I could spend hours behind the breakers hanging with the cool surf dudes waiting to catch and ride the 'perfect wave'.  I was even cool enough to enter the water from the rocks of the headland with the best of the surfers, rather than taking the safe, but tiring, option of battling the breakers from the beach.

It was here I would find many illicit romances with both other visiting boys or as I very quickly found out with the older surfers.  It didn't take much from being asked to help them zip up their wet-suits to being asked to meet them at the dressing sheds at some stage during the day.

 We lived some 20 km from the beach in a straight line.  Getting there was closer to 30km as I would have to travel  12 km by train, then catch two different buses,ending up with a 1km walk to get there.
In the afternoons, if I wasn't getting picked up by Mom I would ditch this and hitch-hike home, or to the railway station - still a 15 km drive through national park bushland.

Getting a lift was no problem.  Usually it was was with young guys and girls who had been surfing for the day.  It would be during these drives that I was introduced to pot smoking and on many occasions end up somewhere in the bush stoned and having sex with many of the hot young drivers.

I also fell in love with live theatre.  This was a time when Australia was emerging from it's 'cultural desert' image and live theatre was all the rage.  Of course it was expensive and the only theatres were in the city.  To finance my trips I had to find money.  There were two ways I did this.  Either I trolled the neighborhood on weekends going odd-jobs.  Gardening, washing cars, mowing lawns etc or, along with my friend Mark did the 'milk money' run on Friday nights.

It was still an innocent and safe era back then.  And while people locked their front doors during the day, everybody still kept a spare key under a flower pot or in the letter box.  We also had the long since vanished milk deliver every morning.  You would leave your empty (scrupulously washed by my mother) milk bottles next to the letterbox each night and they would be replaced by new filled ones the next morning.

I know people often say 'it's the next best thing to sliced bread', but honestly one of the greatest inventions of that time was the plastic milk bottle top!  Milk was delivered in glass bottles with foil lids and also came full fat!  That meant that the first inch of the milk was pure cream.  As young kids we used to fight for this first creamy part of the milk.  That is of course unless the Currawongs hadn't pecked their way through the foil and lapped up the cream before you got to it.  Currawongs are Australian birds, like large Magpies, with a beautiful morning song, but also an annoying habit of breaking through the milk tops and drinking the cream - so when plastic, full seal caps were invented we were all thrilled.

Anyway milk was delivered daily and once a week, in our neighbourhood on Saturday mornings, you would leave the week's bill money in one of the empty bottles.  So on Friday nights Mark and I would often meet up, generally sometime after 11pm and do the 'milk run'.  Trawling the suburb and collecting the milk money.  We never did our own neighborhood and were clever enough to pick a different area each week.  Some nights we would collect over $20 each which was a fortune back then.  It took many months and repeat visits before people got wise and started replacing money with cheques!

So despite the misery of school days and the constant tense home environment I managed to find peace, fun and my own identity.  I knew it wasn't the norm but I had never wanted to be part of the norm and couldn't wait for the chance to begin my own life away from the boredom and restraints of suburbia...